Short Story

There
were really only two places to be at noon on Sunday in Albion: in church if you
so feared God that you believed your absence would lead to eternal damnation or
in the saloon if you already knew you’d be drinking whiskey with the devil
before your dead body was cold. The church bells rang every hour on the hour on
Sunday. The only exception was the noon hour when it rang exactly five minutes
after noon. A part of the preacher’s clever ploy to squeeze five extra minutes
of sermon and worship from his congregation. Nobody was the wiser.

Sunday
nights were the quietest nights in the saloon. Sometimes there wasn’t anybody
in there on Sunday night except for the preacher himself – who took advantage
of this knowledge – and the bartender. That’s due almost entirely to the fact
that those lawless cowboys, bandits and brigands who didn’t go to church had already gotten drunk, brawled and passed
out no later than five o’clock in the afternoon.

“So
he says to me, he says, ‘Jack, you ain’t got the damnable shot and you know
it.’ Course I’s lookin’ at his ugly mug down my sights and he’s got a hunk a
chaw in his cheek and he got his six pointed right back at me. And I yell
at ‘eem, I says, ‘You go head and see just how square I gotcha.’ And so he
does. I seen ‘eem spit some chaw and just as he cocks his hammer, I dropped
‘eem. Time his spit hit the ground, he was rollin’ around and clutchin’ his leg
screamin’ and hollerin’, ‘Damnit, Jack you shot me!’ And I says to ‘eem, I
says, ‘Billy, you’re about as good a fighter as you are a smart sonuvabitch.’”

The table in the saloon surrounding
Diamondfield Jack heaved in one big fit of laughter. “Next thing I know,” says
Jack, “he’s laid up in one a them rooms with one a them whores. Poor girl can’t
even make no money, him sittin’ up in her bed like a lump on a log. Only
bedpost queen in there’s that damn boy Billy.”

A chair screeched across the
pine floor like a note on an out of tune harmonica. From it, a large man stood
up, hands twitching at his sides, eyes narrowed, peering straight at
Diamondfield Jack. “You lying, good-for-nothing bastard!” he spat at Jack.

The smile on Jack’s face crept
away as he spoke without looking at the man, “Ain’t no lie. You wasn’t there,
Clyde.” He took a sip of his bourbon and finally looked up at Clyde who was
standing two tables away, “You stay outta this or watch your goddamn mouth.”
His voice was smooth and cool, and he nodded at Clyde as he spoke, warning more
than irritated or threatening. Diamondfield turned away again to his drink.

“Horseshit, Jack! Everyone in here
knows,” he waddled in his saddle-ridden saunter towards Diamondfield still
sitting in his chair and looked down at him. More composed, he finished, “You
ain’t ne’er told a story true in your life.” By now the entire saloon was
hushed. He was right. Jack had gotten his nickname ‘Diamondfield’ because all
he ever talked about was how he was going to strike it rich in the diamond
fields a few days ride along the river. He said he’d seen the diamond so big it
would have added extra weight to a cattle scale and all he was waiting for was
to clear it out a little, give the other prospectors a chance before he made his killing. And yet, here he was in Podunk, Nowhere in the middle of the desert
working for the cattle company as an enforcer to keep the sheep off the
cattle grazing land.

“And you know this concerns me. Them’s my
sheep he was lookin’ after out there. I lost half the flock ‘cause a you,”
Clyde continued. Here and there was the sound of boots shuffling on pine floors followed by the clinking spin and whir of a spur, a hock phtoo of tobacco spit, coughs and drunk groans, but all eyes
were fixed on Diamondfield and Clyde. All that were still awake, even if there
were two or three Clydes and Diamondfields filling their vision.

Diamondfield Jack took the rest of
his bourbon straight up in one gulp and slammed the empty glass with a clank on
the table. He pushed himself up from the table with his arms and slid his own
chair out behind him. It fell on its back and Diamondfield wobbled a bit as he
turned to meet the man’s stare with his own. Resting his hand on the .45 in his
holster on his right hip, he said with an arrogance, “I never lie, my six as my
witness, ole Clydesdale. You can ask it if you’d like.” Even with some stifled
chuckles, especially from his own table, Diamondfield didn’t crack a smile.

“Son, you must be liquored outta
your gourd. I tell you what, we can settle this right now, if’n y’ant to. We
can do it here or we can take it outside. Don’t make no matter to me.”

Diamondfield stared at him for
a minute, his liquefied brain processing everything, trying to keep up. The
barkeep interjected, “Won’t be no fighting here, fellas. You’re gonna do this,
you take it outside. Not in this establishment.” Neither one of them paid him
any attention.

Finally,
Diamondfield broke the silence, “Honest, Clydesdale, I ain’t got a bone to pick
with you. I’s just pullin’ your reins. We’re as square as an outhouse far as
I’m concerned.”

Clyde gritted his teeth. It pissed
him off even more. He knew what Diamondfield was doing, that he had just
defused the situation so that anything he did in retaliation would likely have
him hanging from a noose on the gallows in front of the entire town and yet, he
was insulted. Sitting down and letting him get away with his insults would make
Clyde look like… less of a man.

Clyde contemplated it all in
his head. He reasoned that two drinks was just the right amount. He was a
better judge after a couple drinks than he was straight sober. He could see
better, shoot better, and clearly Diamondfield was in no condition to put a
bullet in a sleeping cow, much less draw and pull on a real, live shooting man.
If it went down now, Clyde had the drop on Diamondfield. The idea of swinging
from the gallows completely escaped Clyde at that moment.

Clyde saw his opportunity and
reached for his pistol. His partner from the table grabbed his arm just in time
and stepped halfway in front of Clyde grabbing his shoulder with the other hand,
“Come on cowboy, we gotta finish our game of spades.”

Clyde exhaled and looked at his
partner, “Where were we? My deal?” They both turned and walked toward their table.

“No, your play.” his partner
reminded him. He tiptoed and whispered into Clyde’s ear, “Ain’t worth it, ole
boy. Not here, not now. You’ll have your day. So will he like every that dog
needs puttin’ down.”

Clyde grabbed his chair by the back
and drug it in a low screech across the floor. He tossed it back in
front of the table he sat at before with a loud thud above the din.
Diamondfield stood there, wobbling with his eyes fixed in a gaze through the
tops of his brows at Clyde. The boys at the table went back to playing their
card game and Diamondfield turned back to his. All of them were still sitting,
looking up at him. He shot a reassuring smile to the men at his table that he
was in control. In case any of them were worried. They weren’t.

Back at the Hearts game, a queen of
spades lay on top of three other lesser cards and it took Clyde a moment to
pick his play. He laid down the King of Diamonds to win the pile. One of the
guns at Clyde’s table, the lean fellow with bushy brows and an unshaven face chimed in, “Would you fellas look at that. The king of diamonds killed
the bedpost queen!” It was Clyde’s table that erupted in laughter. Except Clyde
and his straight-laced mouth only visible from the toothpick sticking out of it.

“You got something to say me, boy?!”
Jack queried to the lean fellow.

“Your bone ain’t with him Diamondfield Jack,” Clyde spat his name
like a curse,“And I’m sayin’ it.
Seems anytime somebody gets shot around here, somehow you’re implicated. Now I
don’t find that a coincidence. Even if you was married to the bitch. Pardon me,
the whore. That’s more acc'rate.”

It fell silent again in the saloon.
Diamondfield Jack sat in his chair and called behind him to the bartender,
“Give me another dead cowboy,” which was slang for beer.

Immediately he stood up and faced
Clyde. Clyde watched his hands intently, expecting a draw. Everybody else in
the bar cleared a way between and behind them for gunfire. Soon, Clyde’s
partner creaked out of his chair. Before he was fully standing, Clyde put his
hand out to stop him. “Not this time old boy. Today is this dog’s day.” His
partner sat back down with the stiff quietness of a mother creeping away from a
baby’s crib. “What’s the time?” Clyde asked in general, keeping his eyes on
Jack.

“’Bout one minute to noon,” the
lean, young fellow said.

“Tell you what, Jack. You don’t have
to draw first, if you're afeard of the gallows. We both know first draw is getting the noose if he don't get the bullet. Soon as that bell tolls, we both draw.”

“Sounds about right,” Jack agreed.

“Wait! If’n you’re gonna do it here,
at least let me move my oak barrel. Don’t need no damn holes in it or it ain’t
no good,” the bartender pleaded as he made his way toward the barrel which sat
next to the old grandfather style clock behind Clyde.

“I’d hurry if I’s you. I ain’t looking
to put a hole in you too,” Jack cawed.

The bartender spun the barrel on its
bottom rim and guided it toward the bar. “All right. Do your business. But I didn’t condone any of this.”

Several moments passed in silence,
each waiting for the other to make a move, waiting for the clock behind Clyde to ring its bells. Not even so much as a cough or a
spit of tobacco could be heard. The silence made way to restlessness and
whispers. The intensity of the situation had thrown their sense of time off
because what seemed like at least three minutes had passed and the clock bell
still hadn’t rung.

“Your clock broke?” Clyde asked.

“Clock works just fine last I
checked. You heard the eleven o’clock toll,” the bartender reassured. “Might be
your sense of time is broke.” The bartender bared his teeth with a large grin
that nobody saw.

“Well I’ll be a sonuvabitch! It is
broke!” one of the voices from the saloon called out as he examined the clock.
The pendulum and the second hand were completely still. He tapped the glass to
make sure it wasn’t working, “Yep. Not movin’ ‘t’all. Still as a stump.”

Others nearby crept over to check it
out for themselves. One of them nodded at the bartender in agreeance.

“Welp, looks like we ain’t havin’ us
a good ole fashioned shoot up in here today, boys.” The grin stayed on the
bartender’s face.

“Looks
like today’s your lucky day, Clyde.” Diamondfield laughed as he turned and
grabbed the nearest drink from his table.

“Lucky like hell. I’da put you
down, Jack.” Clyde relaxed and walked toward the clock. Diamondfield followed
him. They stood there, neither looking at the other, examining the clock and
both silently thanking God for this minor miracle. “Don’t think this is over just
‘cause you got past today.” Clyde’s breath fogged up the clock glass. He moved
the toothpick around in his mouth nervously. “How’s about we both go home the
rest of the day, let these people drink and play in peace. Only right after
all.”

Clyde
could see Jack’s wide eyes in the glass staring intently into the clock,
searching, either for answers or courage to speak. Or both. Clyde turned to
face him and before he could ask again, Jack bumbled, “Y-yeah. Sounds about
right.”

They
both turned and walked out of the saloon together as it returned to its normal
Sunday bustle of drinking and cards.

One
of the patrons walked over to the bartender, “Must be some kinda miracle. What
are the odds the clock would stop just then?” he asked him.

“Oh,
I’d say the odds were pretty damn good once I moved that barrel. Them
floorboards have been warped and I ain’t got ‘em replaced yet. They stick up
just enough to keep the clock from being level. And when it’s not level, it
don’t work right. That barrel is what keeps it level and ticking. ”

“You
clever sonuvabitch. Hell, if you didn’t own the place I’d buy you a drink.” He
turned toward the rest of the saloon and shouted, “Hey, everybody hear that?
Clock only works on account of the barrel keeping the clock level. He moved the
damned barrel so the clock wouldn’t work. That’s a sneaky trick, but we ain’t
mad atcha. Whole place was about to shit a brick!” The saloon regained its
joviality. A few of the patrons even came up to the bartender and shook his
hand or patted him on the back. The bartender’s grin got wider and wider with
every one.

Just
then, church was letting out. That meant it was time for 12:05 church bells.

Outside,
a Bang.

Then
Bang-bang.

Then
silence.

The whole rest of the town that was
just letting out of church had seen the whole thing go down in broad daylight.
The women clutched and shielded their crying children as they stared in horror
and disgust. The men stood by, jaws scraping shocked expressions into the dirt.

“You all saw it, he drew first. Damnit,
Clyde! You shot me!” Jack hollered at Clyde’s still body crumpled on the ground.
Jack rolled around, clutching his stomach, blowing air and grunting on
account of the .44 slug that had punched him in the gut. Once his stomach was
patched up, Jack was going to hang from the gallows pole. No two ways about it.

Did you enjoy my story? Please let me know what you think by leaving a review! Thanks,
JJMcQuade

sachaannbritz:
Oh wow what a rollercoaster ride this book and was. Joy sorrow laughter and tears. Amazing story telling and so far a damn exciting series to read. Looking forward to the other books in this series. You rock

👸:
Such a cute story! With lead characters you cant help but love and cheer for. A few words here and there that need to be changed but not a major issue since the story is so good! 😍 was so sad when it got to the end because it was over 😂 but the bonus chapters! 🙌👌 would definitely read again!!

Shaieda Bartley:
I like that all tho the ladies have been raped or kidnap, they had still stand strong and form. They all have kids even tho they got rape they love there kids endlessly, there is a lot of young people out their that i would just want to read this book to open their eyes and just know that no matt...